Curse of the Poetry Festival

Wonderland in white.

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Uncle! [slapping the mat] Aunt! I give!

Poetry curse: 1. Me: 0.

My friends B, L and I just got back last weekend from a 2 ½-day retreat in Minnesota. Most of the 35 women at the retreat had been coming to the annual event for 25+ years. L and I were invited to give poetry workshops as part of the event, a yearly gathering to celebrate women and art. In addition to our poetry workshops, the weekend also included meditative drawing, acrylic painting, and interpretive movement. B spent her afternoons birding in the MN woods. We all had a lovely time and made many new friends, but it was NOT a poetry festival. You’ll see in a minute why that matters.

Under this sugar coating is a layer of ice.

My plan yesterday was to drive with another guest poet to a poetry festival in Aberdeen, about 3-4 hours northwest of here. Two other poets would drive in from Sioux Falls and MN. When I checked safetravelusa.com early yesterday morning, the northbound leg of our route was designated “No travel advised.” The westerly leg of our route was “ice and snow covered; slippery,” with continuing snow showers. So we scrapped the drive for the day and hoped that by this morning, the plow fairies would have swept it all away.

I think I’ve mentioned that each time my friend P invites me to Aberdeen to do workshops & readings, I run into freakish weather (see http://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2008/08/hackers-really-raise-my-hackles.html for gory details of one of these trips). But what I haven’t mentioned is that each year in February, when I organize the annual one-day-only student poetry festival at our own Little Town U, something BIG gums up the works. One year, we had a blizzard the day before the festival. Another year, we had an ice storm the morning of the festival. And one year, on the morning of the festival (and because winter wouldn’t cooperate that year, I guess), Ray was sideswiped on the interstate by a distracted driver, flipped, and rolled his pickup into a ditch. He was okay, but of course I was a short-circuiting bundle of jangled nerves the entire day.

Time to refill the bird feeders!

So you can see why my first reaction when P called yesterday to cancel the festival was hysterical laughter. I’d been smacked down again by the dreaded poetry curse!

It’s true…I’m relieved not to have to fishtail across the frozen north. And the farmyard is a breathtaking wonderland in white (if you don’t have to go anywhere). And I cancelled classes today expecting to be gone, so I’ll have a nice long, snowy weekend to grade papers and knit (there’s no un-cancelling classes—30 seconds after cancelling a class, students have already made 30 other plans).

Still, I’ll miss hanging out with P, sampling Aberdeen martinis, and reading & writing poetry. And I LOVE road trips.

Brigid, in your shawl of snow, protect us.

I’m starting to think that me + poetry festivals = psychic disturbance in the Universe. But I won’t give up, dammit. Somehow, I will lift this curse. I will burn sage over my Yeats books. I will speak in trochaic tetrameter. I will knit bookmarks. I will memorize Christopher Dewdney’s “Grid Erectile” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN3AaYp_kyY). I will stockpile magnetic poetry kits. And next year, when plans are afoot for Little Town U’s poetry festival or another trip to Aberdeen, I will not reveal my intentions aloud, lest the Universe hear. As the goddess Brigid is my witness, one day poetry festivals everywhere will be able to raise their faces to the sun and shout out their slant rhymes, curse-free and unafraid.

Jack Blizzard's Last Hurrah

glazed chairs in spring colors

I am planning & packing to go do a poetry workshop and reading in Aberdeen, South Dakota. I’ve gone to Aberdeen several times before for workshops and readings, and each time I go, Jack Blizzard has a nasty little tantrum. It doesn’t matter if it’s February, March, or April—I’ve gone in each of these months before—there’s a freakish winter storm.

farmyard dressed in white

I’m supposed to head out tomorrow, so yesterday, of course, we had an ice storm. It glazed everything with a ¼” of treacherous crystal. I crawled home from an early evening meeting by driving 20 miles on gravel at 25 mph. By the time I got home, my hands were permanently molded into white-knuckle-grip claws. All of this, in spite of the fact that the day before, the temp in Little Town was 73 degrees and female students were sashaying to & from classes in their Daisy Duke cutoffs.

pergola's ice fringe

But remember, we’re hearty prairie stock. Jack can’t ruffle our feathers. Under this crusty layer of white, the farmyard grass is green and growing again. The allium, tulips, and crocus are up, and the robins are busy building nests. I’m already itching to get out the garden sculptures. Ray is finding progressively more “outside work” to do—rake up honey locust pods, tune up the lawn tractor, take down an old barbed-wire fence, tie up new prayer flags.

So maybe it's brain damage from the stroke, but by golly, I will pack my car, load up the emergency winter car kit, stock my backpack with water and beef jerky, and charge my phone. If I have to, I will crawl gravel roads across the frozen tundra, all the way to Aberdeen. My children taught me not to give in. They taught me that the best way to stop Jack Blizzard’s tantrum is to completely ignore it. Stay calm, hum “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” head down, plow forward.

hundreds of snow geese take a roadside rest

Pre-Spring Warning

It’s March on the Row—spring break at Little Town U—and an animal’s fancy turns to love. Our young peacock, Frankie, has grown a gorgeous train (tail feathers) over the winter, and he’s been putting on quite a daily show for the girls. If you’ve never seen the peacock mating dance, it’s pretty elaborate and a little silly…not that different from the beer-fueled mating rituals I’ve seen in our local Little Town bar.

Here’s a short clip of Francoise doing the dance last spring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31yGZUszW5o. If you make it to the end of the video, you’ll get a look at his gorgeous blue neck and hear the thrumming of his feathers, a sound that still fascinates me. Francoise, who is older (wiser?) and has been ousted this year by the young, buff, black-winged Frankie, has been spending most of his time in the rafters of the loafing shed, where he’s out of the wind and can keep his 6-foot feathers suspended and neat. The dominant peacock gets the harem, so Francoise seems a little bored.

In addition to peacock love, there are other signs of spring at the Row. Bluejays drown out prettier birdsong with their annoying hoodlum shrieks, while woodpeckers telegraph staccato messages. Barn pigeons do big lazy loops over the yard. Rabbits hopscotch in the farmyard twilight, then late-night country roads turn into raccoon speedways. And I ordered two new pairs of Birkie sandals. O yes, these are hopeful harbingers. But don’t be fooled. Prairie people know not to trust these early tricks. Each year, Ray reminds me that the last big snow comes AFTER the robins return, and the robins aren’t back yet. So here’s my annual cautionary poem, and please...keep the parka & shovel handy.

THE IDES OF MARCH

The seer was right to warn us,

beware the ides of March.

It's a dangerous time, peering

through iced windows at the jeweled

tease of crocus and daffodil.

We've weathered another season

of deep-freeze, locked up tight

in muscle and mind. We're tired

of winter's grey and gritty leftovers.

But this is no time to get careless,

toss a floorboard heater through

the beveled glass and go out,

where Spring flashes her flannel petticoat

embroidered in pinks and greens,

leaves us gaping, breathless,

in air still cold as a knife blade,

stripping off the down.

Winter Work

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Well-Stocked Prairie Pantry

This wacky winter in South Dakota has resourceful prairie people doing supermodel quick-changes—stripping off the down and woolies, then piling on 17 layers, then trying to coordinate Bermuda shorts with thermal turtlenecks. Last week, in the middle of January, it was 53 degrees. Over the weekend, Ray was shoveling snow and the wind chill got down to -25. My friend Bee calls it South Dakota’s “bipolar meteorological disorder.” Seriously, South Dakota…get some help.

Knit Brain Hat in Progress

Here on the Row, we’re busy with winter chores. Sinclair Lewis wrote, “Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.” Absotively true, and no one knows it better than SoDakians, except maybe Arctic tundra-dwellers. Take our wood stove, for example. It’s so romantic, right? that lovely warm glow? iron kettle of water on top—cinnamon, cloves & orange peel filling the house with steamy, spicy perfume? sleeping cat curled up on a sheepskin in front of the stove? Sigh…makes me wanna churn some butter. But I’m not sure Ray’s feeling the romance right now. Right now, mid-winter, that stove is Ray’s part-time job. Chop the wood. Split the wood. Carry the wood. Make a fire. Stoke the stove. Clean the stove. Dump the ash. Repeat. All. Winter. Long. I remember getting my first wood stove back in the 70’s. I was so thrilled. But my buzz-kill grandma said, “Why would you want something we couldn’t WAIT to get rid of?” I figured she was just too old to get it. O youthful arrogance…

Pom-Pom Hat

Stocking the pantry is another winter occupation. Hearty prairie folk know how to “put food by.” Deeply ingrained in our psyche is the primordial walrus-like instinct to pack on blubber. And in the back of our minds we know that at any moment, the grocery store might be on the other side of a blizzard, just out of reach.

So we’re doing our usual winter panicky pathological food-hoarding. My sky-high triglycerides, revealed in a recent health screening, have us eating boat-loads of fresh tuna and salmon. (New research suggests that triglycerides, more than HDL or LDL cholesterol, are a risk factor for stroke and heart disease. It now seems I had EVERY stroke risk factor known to modern medicine. Sheesh.) Our freezer is full of organic grass-fed beef, lamb, and Bambi’s cousin. I keep a giant container of cooked blackeyed peas in the fridge now, which I add to everything, since it’s the single best food for lowering tri’s. Kale is also good for lowering tri’s, so I’m making kale chips, kale smoothies, and wilted kale with blackeyed peas. I make huge batches of rainbow quinoa and bulgur tabhouli, which we snack on for days. The pantry is full of canned peaches, tomatoes, applesauce, and pickled jalapenos. We could live on nothing but homemade jam from now till spring. We have homemade wine a’plenty, and I have several pounds of decaf Sumatra beans in the freezer, so we can keep our fluids topped-off and balanced as we wait out this nasty cold. We’re not quite as obsessive about stocking our larder as the spinster sisters in Kit Reed’s short story, “Winter,” but we’re close…wandering strangers, beware.

Blackeyed Pea Salad, Tabhouli, Kale & Parsnip Chips

Another of our winter jobs is keeping our peacocks alive. We’re holding steady at two males and two females. In spite of reported sightings, the rest of the flock never returned after last summer’s drought and predator infestation. So we’re giving our micro-flock every advantage we can (short of bringing them inside and knitting them sweaters). They’re feasting on dry cat food, dried corn, black oil sunflower seed, and occasional boiled eggs (mashed, shell and all). Giving them eggs might seem cannibalistic, but they need the extra fat in this brutal cold. Ray hasn’t put brooding lights up in the loafing shed rafters yet, but I’m sure that’s coming.

Peacock Power-Nap

When I’m not grading student essays (ALWAYS a winter occupation) or having fun with food, I’m practicing another cottage industry: knitting. Two family members are cooking up new babies, so I dug out scrumptious angora yarn, and kitty hats will be underway soon. I recently sorted my yarn stash, so I’m also making colorful striped silly hats with bits of leftover texture-y yarns for next year’s Christmas stash.

Keep the Home Fires Burning!

When Sinclair Lewis said winter was an occupation, I think he was talking about the work it takes to survive the weather. But out here on the northern plains—land of vitamin D deprivation, cabin fever, and Seasonal Affective Disorder—I think we keep busy so we won’t turn on each other. Keep stoking that stove, folks, and bring in some more kindling...

A Mochajava State of Mind

Today, most of the northern half of South Dakota is hunkered down mid-blizzard. I-29 is closed from Watertown north, into North Dakota. It’s the last day of February—practically spring already—and I guess Jack Blizzard wanted to make this leap day extra special, lest we let down our prairie guard too soon. Here in the southeast corner of the state, we have only a little dusting of snow, but the 35-mph winds whip it into the air, turning our little farmyard all grey and blizzardy. I have a pile of papers to grade, but thankfully, I don’t have to leave home today, so it’s a delicious, woodstove-fired, coffee-fueled, tucked-in day. 

And speaking of coffee, part of my utter joy at staying home stems from long, lingering, pajama’ed coffee mornings. You can read about the coffee origin myth, and my own re-discovery of the magic brew during my college years, on this previous blog post: http://uncanneryrow.blogspot.com/2008/10/blog-post.html

But my obsession with coffee goes back much further. When I was in 3^rd grade at Florence School in Omaha, Al Vaccaro dared me to eat a whole clove of raw garlic. I felt compelled to take the dare, both because Al was my boyfriend and often brought me snapdragons to school (making Lori Boonstra, my arch nemesis, gloriously jealous), and because, well, I’ve been a rebel from the get-go. It didn’t take Mrs. Lindsay, my teacher, long to discover the shenanigans. She marched me to the cafeteria, where the Evil Lunch Lady made me chew up a few…my life will all make sense to you now…coffee beans! 

Lunch Lady’s evil deed was designed to override my garlic-breath, but what it actually did was to set me on a path that would eventually become my passion. My kitchen is decorated in "coffee kitsch;" I own every kind of coffee apparati made (Bunn auto drip, Moka espresso pot, French presses, Melitta, etc.); I have a potted Arabica plant in my greenhouse; I collect coffee cookbooks; my anniversary present from Ray was a burr coffee grinder, for which he scored major partner points; my entire wardrobe is various shades of brown and black. As the song goes, “I love the java jive, and it loves me.”

So I’m settling in today with my second pot of elixir, and I thought I’d offer a bit more coffee lore to warm up this snowy South Dakota day…

Today, nearly half of the coffee plants in existence are the progeny of one tree that was smuggled into Martinique by a French soldier in the 18^th century. 

The coffee beans we know & adore are the pits of a cherry-like fruit that grow on evergreen trees. Coffee trees (cultivated to grow only 10 feet high for easier picking) cannot tolerate frost, and they prefer volcanic soil, indirect sunlight, and high altitude. The higher the altitude, the better the coffee. The annual yield of a coffee tree is about a pound of beans.  

There are only two species of coffee, Arabica and Robusta. Arabica is the stuff most of us drink. Robusta is generally lower in flavor acids and higher in caffeine but is sometimes mixed with Arabica to give the brew an extra caffeine kick.  

Contrary to popular belief, the darker the roast, the less caffeine, since caffeine is broken down in the roasting process. Espresso roasts have the least caffeine.  

Coffee is the second most widely used product in the world after oil. We drink 1400 million cups per day, and it’s the world’s most popular drink after water.  

Coffee was declared illegal 3 times by 3 different cultures: (1) In Mecca during the 16th century; (2) By Charles the II in Europe; (3) By Fredrick the Great of Germany in 1677.  

Medicinal Benefits – People who drink coffee have less colon cancer, Type II diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, gallstones, and cirrhosis of the liver. Coffee can protect your teeth from cavities, and it can help manage asthma and help stop an asthma attack in progress if no meds are available. People who smoke or drink alcohol and also drink coffee get some protection from liver and heart problems.

Other Coffee Uses – sprinkle used coffee grounds around your garden plants to stop snails and slugs, and to keep cats away from the garden. Coarsely ground coffee makes a good exfoliating facial scrub. Greasy pans can be cleaned with the leftover ground beans you used to scrub your face. Rubbing coffee beans between your hands for a few seconds will get rid of food prep odors, and you can suck on a coffee bean to freshen your breath (or chew a few, if you’re a daredevil 3^rd-grader).

Midwestern Manners

I'm sure Jack Blizzard is somewhere snickering in his sleeve. On my way home from town yesterday, I ran onto a patch of ice, and MiniPearl (my Toyota minivan) and I slid off the road into a snow-filled ditch. When something like this happens, it reminds me why I love living here in small-town mid-America: The people here are awesome.

My slide into the ditch was a beautiful, almost graceful movement that seemed, as the cliché goes, to happen in slow-mo (imagine Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1 in G Minor wafting through the Universe as a soundtrack). Mini and I scuttled along the shoulder for a bit, then arced sideways (pirouette?), left the road, and drifted down, down, down until we settled, tipped sideways toward the passenger side, in about 3’ of snow and a good 6’ below the road. Amazing little ice-ballet that actually took only seconds.

Thank Skadi (Norse goddess of winter) there were no trees, fenceposts, road signs, or cows. Thank Skadi MiniPearl didn’t tilt sideways another foot or two and roll. Thank Skadi I was belted in and didn’t fly into the windshield. Thank Skadi that ditch was full of cushioning snow.

So there I was, sitting at an odd angle in Mini, eye-level with the road I’d just left, and bracing myself on the passenger armrest so I wouldn’t fall into the passenger door. I was chock full of adrenaline and too fight-or-flighty to reason out what to do. So, of course, I called Ray (in his car, driving home from work), who told me to call my daughter, who gave me the number of our Little Town tow guy. Thank Skadi for cell phones.

I knew it would take Tow Guy a while to get to me, so I took a quick inventory and made sure I wasn’t hurt. Then I just sorta settled in. It was actually a beautiful day out there. Except for the deep ditches, the landscape in that area is very flat and open. The wind was gusting west to east, toward me, and the gusts picked up snow from the open fields, blowing it along the ground in horizontal sheets (hence, the sudden ice on the road). But the sun was shining, turning the snow into brushstrokes of glitter. The sky was a subdued greyish-turquoise and mottled with clouds.

I thought maybe I’d meditate, both because I had the time and because it would ease the adrenaline rush, but then the miracle of prairie neighborliness began. Every car that passed me stopped to make sure I was okay, except one (I have your license plate number, pal, and I’ll be turning you in to the Midwestern Mandatory Hospitality Police). One man offered to make calls for me. One woman offered her husband’s tractor to try and pull me out. One woman offered her home, in case I wanted a warm place to wait for Tow Guy.

Tow Guy finally showed up, a white haired grandpa-ish guy in his 60’s or 70’s, in a light spring jacket, with no hat on. It took some time, some careful maneuvering of his truck (which slid at one point, and I thought, oh great…), hitching, unhitching, and re-hitching, but he finally got Mini up on the road again. When I said I didn’t have any cash, he asked if I drove to town every day. I said yes, and he said I could just stop by Monday and pay. No invoice, no I.O.U., no collateral…just stop by Monday. Then he said, “Drive slow.” I said, “Yes, sir.” That may be the first time I’ve ever addressed anyone as “sir,” that’s how brimming with gratitude I was (I am).

I’m a little stiff and sore today, maybe from the sudden pre-crash muscle lock, or from bracing myself for a half-hour while I waited for Tow Guy, but I know I got off easy. Mini’s undercarriage is packed with snow, ice, and mud, so her wheels don’t wanna turn right now, but I think a good car wash will fix her right up. I have no desire to go outside today. I have some good movies on DVR, a fresh pot of coffee, Advil, a heating pad, and some homemade minestrone soup. And maybe I’ll knit up a quick winter hat to take in on Monday when I stop to pay Tow Guy.

The Winter of Our Discontent

This winter will certainly go down in the Annals of the Bizarre here on the Row…a confounding conflagration of calamity…a sheit-storm of Really, Universe? Really?!?

Take the weather. Last week, on the day of The Great 2012 Tuneup (see previous post), it was a sun-soaked, record-breaking, 62-degree day in Sioux Falls. I could have sunbathed in my bikini on the veranda of the Heart Hospital, though that might have been too much (literally & figuratively) for a few too-fragile hearts, scaring them into permanent OFF. 


We’ve had very little snow so far, and the landscape remains mostly brown and gold. No icy roads, no white-out blizzards, no waiting for Tractor Man to dig us out. Corn-fused pea-boys are out fanning their half-grown tail feathers (they won’t have fully grown new “trains” until spring) in the faces of bewildered peahens. And I should be celebrating Mother Nature’s beneficence, but I recently read that the incidence of depression actually increases in northern climes during unusually mild winters, since there’s no snow to reflect what little SAD-preventing light we count on up here. Time to break out the full-spectrum bulbs and vitamin D.

Or take our peaflock. By mid-summer we had 29 peacocks—18 adults and 11 chicks. Then came The Marauder(s). Over the next few months, peas began to disappear. Or we’d come home to a half-eaten carcass. The first couple grisly scenes made us think it was a furry predator. Then we woke to a pile of cleanly-plucked feathers below a tree branch, which  made us think it was a raptor or very big owl. Then finding three or four headless but otherwise intact peabodies (I found the most recent headless peahen today) made us think raccoons. I finally decided that a local thug-critter got word out that the Row is a free, all-you-can-eat pea smorgasbord—a peaffet—and that we’re completely surrounded by predatory wildlife. So I did what any rebel farmwife would do: I wrapped the Roosting Tree with blinking Christmas lights. This strategy worked for a few days, until a squirrel chewed through the wire (paid off by the coyote down the road, I’m sure). Anyway, we’re down to 13 adult peacocks--not a single surviving summer chick. Some well-meaning friends suggest that Mother Nature simply knew I was in way over my head and “helped” me restore balance. But that’s a net loss of 16 peas in ONE season! So while I’m not a violent person, I’m now shopping for a patio duck blind/paintball gun combo.

Back to The Great 2012 Tuneup. In addition to Ray’s heart nudge (“attack” sounds so deliberate), my friend’s surgery to remove what she calls a “non-benign visitor” from her colon, and my other friend’s mom ending up as Ray’s roomie down the hall at the Heart Hospital, my oldest brother has had at least three surgeries on his eyeball this winter to repair (and repair and repair) a detached retina. This is unsettling because (1) he’s in Ecuador, where I can’t just pop over to help out, (2) he has to spend most of his time face-down and isn’t supposed to use his eye for a while, and (3) he makes his living working mostly as an online travel writer, which is hard to do if you’re not supposed to LOOK at anything. Then, Mom had to have a couple of teeth pulled. Dangerous, because I know a person can only stand so much blended split-pea soup before he or she loses it completely and starts trying to train his or her little dog to sing “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Amid all this, I had to keep plugging away to get ready for a new semester. Also, since about New Year’s, I’ve had the South Dakota Respiratory Plague, which means my best friends are Emergen-C, Advil, Puffs, Nyquil, chicken soup and my heating pad.

It's not one stressful event that does us in; it's the pile-up, when we don't have enough time between stressful events to recover or rally. So I’ve been in a sort of stunned pre-hibernation mode lately. I've been “closing ranks,” as my Mom would say. Holing up. Hiding out. Yes, I know there are bigger things going on out there in the Great Wide World and I may be thinking a little too locally. Yes, I know it’s only January. And yes, I know Jack Blizzard’s probably in Wessington Springs right now, having a beer and plotting on his bar napkin a trajectory that will lead him directly to our door. But for now, if I don't answer my door or my phone, it's because I'm curled up in a blanket-wrapped ball, knitting peacock chain maille and contemplating what surely will continue to be one mighty strange winter.

Blizzard Survival Kit

Jack Blizzard had his first major tantrum of the season yesterday. It hit South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. It’s a gen-you-whine snow-in on the Row, with an impossible 7’ drift running the length of our long driveway. While we’re waiting for a kind-hearted tractor neighbor and/or county road crew, I thought I’d offer my essential Blizzard Survival Kit…

1. Coffee. You’ll need a couple pounds stored in an opaque, airtight container in the fridge. Then you’ll need another couple pounds stored in airtight bags in the freezer. You might consider ½-decaf if you’ll be snowed in with another human; you wouldn’t want to be too jumpy. But even worse—for all concerned—would be running out.

2. A larder. Out here on the prairie, you want a fully-stocked pantry at all times. Some people, I won’t mention names, have a pantry full of rice noodles, canned oysters, maple syrup, palm fruit pulp, pad thai sauce, canned tomatoes, refried beans, six kinds of crackers, microwave popcorn, and enough pickled jalapenos to stock every Taco Bell in the U.S. So maybe they don’t think in practical, menu-driven terms, but don’t judge; have you ever tried rice noodles with maple syrup and jalapenos? Yeah, I didn’t think so. They might also have a roasting hen, 5 lbs of tilapia, two boxes of henna, a bazillion wonton skins, a dozen candles, half a carrot cake, 3 lbs of coffee (see #1), an old bag of tater tots, 25 lbs of parrot food, a pound of dried parsley and 25 lbs of venison in the freezer.

3. Woolies. You may think you’re too cool for long underwear, but when the snow blows horizontally in a 50 mph wind, you’ll think again. Without the woolies, pale pink prairie skin looks like red cellophane after a 3-minute walk to the loafing shed.

4. A loafing shed. This is for your peacocks. They’ll want somewhere to roost out of the wind, preferably with a snow-free dirt floor below, where you can leave them cat food and black oil sunflower seeds, daily, at 10 a.m. sharp. A flock of 18 hungry peacocks marching toward your back door at 10:05 is a scary sight. Imagine the Skeksies in Dark Crystal, only leaner & meaner.

5. Chocolate. Four kinds of dark chocolate – with ginger, panko breadcrumbs, sea salt, and cayenne. Chocolate contains phenylethylamine, which causes the brain to release dopamine and oxytocin – chemicals involved in falling in love, relaxation, nurturing and orgasm. Avoid chocolate if you’re snowed in with relatives and/or ex’es.

6. Empty carbs. You’ll need Doritos, mashed potatoes, white bread with butter & sugar, and plenty of pasta with butter and parmie. These become especially important from Day 3 on in the event of a snow-in. The semi-comatose carb sedation will help prevent domestic unrest once the chocolate runs out.

7. Layered outerwear. You’ll want flannel-lined jeans and a sweatshirt, insulated coveralls, parka with a fur-lined hood, knee-high snow boots, a wool hat, insulated waterproof gloves, and a wool scarf to wrap around your face. You won’t be able to breathe, see or move, so you may as well stay inside…skip #7.

8. Dish TV. In the midst of a blizzard, all of your self-righteous pontificating about the evils of Bridezillas, Hell’s Kitchen, the golf channel and Nick Jr. goes out the window along with your heat. Trust me – you’ll be happy to stumble across that Petticoat Junction marathon.

9. Paper books and flashlights with fresh batteries. Your power WILL eventually go out. Books will help you survive the TV/Internet DT’s, which set in about 20 minutes after your power goes out.

10. Knitting. A good yarn stash and a 4-day snow-in could net you at least half a dozen adorable Christmas presents. Search the Web for fast, easy knitting patterns on Day 1, before you lose power. Remember, knitting needles are NOT weapons.

11. A wood stove. Have an ample supply of cut wood, dry and in the house. Have a folding Army cot or two near the stove. When the power goes out, pretend you’re camping in the Himalayas, on your way to meet the Dalai Lama. Chanting ohm nama shivaya ohm helps with the shivering.

12. Wine & Bailey’s. Ditto the importance of the semi-coma mentioned in #6.

13. Board/Bored games. On Days 1-2, these will help pass the time and create the illusion of an old-fashioned farm holiday season. On Days 3-4, they come in handy as non-lethal projectiles.

14. Binoculars. From Day 3 on, you’ll need these in order to stare longingly at the Interstate traffic ½-mile away. This will remind you to keep bathing, shaving your legs, and getting dressed in the morning—life is going on somewhere, and someday, you’ll be part of it again.

15. A comfy bed (if the heat is still on). If you’re not dug out by Day 4, take to your bed. Load up with carbs first for heavy, uninterrupted sleep. Pile on the down quilts. Know that when they dig you out, a kindly social worker will arrive to do a “well person” check called in by your mother. She will wake you to make sure you’re still breathing. Tell her you’ll get up as soon as the coffee’s ready.

You look smashing in your John Wayne pajama pants...

I haven’t had time yet to indulge in the post-holiday blahs. Semester grades were due last night at midnight, and I finished my 48-hour grading marathon at 10 p.m. It’s pure procrastination, of which I am the reigning Queen.

So this morning, in order to work out the “teacher’s neck” from hunching over my pile of portfolios for two days, I went out and wandered the yard. Ray had alerted me early this morning to a downed peacock on the road. It was one of the ABBA quads, a male. He had gone to that Great Roost in the Ether. I didn’t see any obvious signs of trauma, so I’m assuming this is the boy who’s been moping around since Christmas, apparently ill. I scooped him off the road, said good-bye, and left him as a tribute meal for the coyote Ray saw dart across the mile road last Friday. Corn-fed peacock. I noticed this morning that the other ABBA boy is lame, one foot curled under, forcing him to limp along on the back of the foot. Frostbite? Varmint bite? Battle wound? Two decades of inbreeding? Whatever the problem, injury, disease, or tired genes, he managed to make his way into the yard for corn and bird seed this morning, and the rest of the flock seems very patient with him.

The baby possum Ray found hunkered down in the loafing shed yesterday morning is gone, although I saw Shadow, the black barn cat, working intently on something near the shed yesterday afternoon. I haven’t seen Snowball, the white cat, for days, but the cat food in the pyramid shed keeps disappearing.

Jack Blizzard can drive even the most passive among us to hunt, I guess. Which reminds me, I just finished Cormac McCarthy’s (No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses) The Road. It reminded me of my favorite American novelist, my buddy Bill Faulkner—the writer we love to hate—in terms of intensity and poetic rhythm of language. It occurs to me that the current and future generations not only won’t CHOOSE to read Faulkner, they won’t have the vocabulary for it. Sad. The Road is a beautifully written post-apocalyptic survival (or not) story, which I recommend without reservation, but don’t read it before bed if you’re hoping for fluffy, happy dreams.

Christmas was wonderful. After a flurry of last-minute arranging, Ray’s family was able to come for dinner on Christmas Eve. His oldest son was here from the Cities, so it was a warm surprise to have the family together (and his niece gave me the highly-coveted Kopi Luwak coffee beans). On Christmas Day, we had a smallish gathering at Mom’s, just Mom, Ray, the kids, and the dogs. There was no Jell-O salad (although Mom snuck her ubiquitous redhot candies onto the otherwise perfect sugar cookies), Mom made every kind of comfort food imaginable, and we played Catch Phrase, men against women. The women rocked. Mom has a tradition of getting all the men in the family identical gifts, and this year it was flannel John Wayne cowboy pajama pants. I suggested they all model the pants for a holiday picture, but no dice. Ray got me the perfect present--a Nintendo DS--my new procrastination tool.

Today, the sun is shining, it’s 30+ degrees, and Mom and I are going to ward off the blahs (and my urge to weep over the dead pea-boy) with shoe shopping in the City. There’s nothing like a new pair of shoes to shuffle out from under Jack’s heavy hand.

Look Who's Looking...

I’m all for overturning the Patriot Act. Weighing the potential useful information Big Brother might get from eavesdropping on Joe Schmoe’s phone calls to Aunt Rhoda or LuLu Librarian’s Internet dating progress, against Americans’ rights to speak, write, worship, talk, correspond, and assemble, & gripe freely & unmonitored, I’ll take freedom. I heard that’s what America is supposed to be all about—freedom—although I’m not naïve enough to believe this is as true in practice as it might be in principle.

But this IS true: People DIE on the prairie in weather like we’re having today, and Big Brother can sometimes be the only savior.

Yesterday, it was in the upper 30’s and Ray, Mom and I fought city traffic in search of last-minute holiday bargains. Today, the wind chill is -20, and a steady haze of snows blows in from the corn field to the west, on a north wind that could peel away your skin in no time. The peacocks are huddled in the loafing shed rafters, as close as they can get to the brooder lamp without setting feathers aflame. There is no figuring the sudden shift, short of the plains waking up in a seriously foul mood.

Our nature here is to slip into that same bad temper and complain about the weather, and I do. But I also appreciate the raw power of the north wind to strip the linden pods in a shower of thready black, and the willingness of barn cats to tolerate my presence if it means Wal-Mart cat food on a makeshift ledge, out of the icy blast.

I’m not sure folks from more temperate climates really get the gravity of inside/outside. Days like this can make going outside, even a simple trip to town for groceries, unbearable. And if you get to town, the truck with all that glorious California (or Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, etc.) produce may have stalled out near Kadoka, or Bessie may have frozen to a fencepost overnight. So most of us stay inside, happy enough with a hearty “freezer stew” and powdered milk.

I remember a couple winters ago, a woman traveling alone on South Dakota highways got caught in a blizzard. She was missing for 2 or 3 days, her car buried somewhere in a drift. They finally found her, alive, by homing in on her cell phone. So when Jack Blizzard unleashes his shenanigans in the Heartland, I try to curb my railing against Big Brother’s constant nosing into my business, because given a choice between BB’s buttinsky meddling, and having someone find a Marlene-sicle on a gravel road near Irene, I’m glad to be trackable.

So if you have to venture out and Jack’s afoot, remember to wear clean underwear in case you high-center on a snowbank in the hinderland. But pay a little attention, too, to your hair & makeup—you’ll wanna look your best in the satellite video, which will most likely be on YouTube by midweek, doctored to look like you’re lip-syncing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”

A Winter State of Mind

It smells like winter this week. The wind is cold, we have a crunchy, golden-red footpath of leaves from the house to the pyramid, the mums are blooming in fire colors, and we’re surrounded by chugging combines well into the night. We finally turned the furnace on against nights in the 30’s, although the days still warm into the 60’s. Houseplants summering on the patio have come inside and are crowded in with the year-round residents of the greenhouse. There are 64 of them now which, incidentally, is the number of hexagrams in the IChing.

I once had a life reading done by a psychic, in which I was told that at the heart of my unique “life seal,” was the IChing’s hexagram 13: Community.

Our peafowl community is holding steady at 15. Yesterday the flock was riled up and peeking out from inside the garage, all except for the one in the linden tree above my head. Suddenly, the one in the tree took flight toward the pasture to the north. Turns out it was a big redtail hawk—the prairie stealth bomber. I ran after it, clapping and yelling that there were fat, leggy chickens down the road. The hawk flew in a big arc south, then west, then north again, and probably ended up right back where she started in the linden tree. The peaflock was still jittery and huddled close to the house when I got home from work, but no casualties.

There WILL be casualties when this election business is done. We forget that whatever nasty venom we muster for the candidates we don’t like, or the friends & family with whom we disagree, or the colleagues we alienate with our rancorous blow-harding, will still be circulating in our systems after the election. We’ll all need a good cowboy or cowgirl when it’s over, someone to take the Bowie knife to our leg and then suck out the poison before it reaches heart & brain.

Speaking of brains, I think this is how the mind works in the South Dakota winter—you’re stuck inside too much, too long in the dark cave, until you begin to chase after obscure connections—drawing invisible lines from one thought to another (unrelated) thought—just to create the sense that something’s moving.

The truth is, my mind actually takes these odd, twisty back roads from one idea to another all the time, sun or snow. I’m okay with that. Because if Jack Blizzard’s inevitable siege buries me under a thick layer of snow & ice soon, I know some spark, some disjointed notion, revelation or epiphany, some thawed, crystal-clear stream of my consciousness, will be moving, moving, moving…

State of the [Hiber]Nation

I’m thrilled to report that all of the peachicks somehow made their way back to the fold after last week’s scary unknown-assailant scattering. So we are, once again, 15.

The chicks—Gloria, Laverne & Shirley, and the Abba quads—are getting big, and the flock is getting pushy about food. Maybe they’re like me, and in spite of this beautiful fall weather, they’re laying on fat for Jack Blizzard, as my Aussie poet friend calls the South Dakota winter. I understand their desperation. In fact, I have an overpowering urge to curl up with a blankie, a truckload of Doritos, a gallon of red wine, and a bad Diane Mott Davidson novel until I’m in a deep, carb-induced hibernation. Sadly, however, I must stay awake...

Yesterday and this morning were grey and drizzly. The flock is hanging around the house, as if they know something’s coming and it’s best to stick close to the food. Hurricane fallout, maybe, or just a preliminary slap from Jack—cold winds or a hint of frost.

Other wildlife seem to feel it, too. Two fawns cut in front of my car just before the shelterbelt the other day, then ducked into the plum thicket where there’s plenty of grass and good tree cover. Mice are coming inside, so the traps are set. The dogs are poofing into their winter coats already. The birdroom windows are closed, and the parrots are spending more time fluffed up and sleeping. Hummingbirds usually come through around Mother’s Day on their trek north and spend a couple of weeks here eating at the feeders. Then we don’t see them again until right about now, when they stop for another couple of weeks until they blow south in late September with the autumn thunderstorms. But this year, they’ve already come & gone, at least two weeks early, and we’re just getting stragglers now; this morning, a fat male buzzed between feeders and the fire begonia. Snowball and Snowflake are fat & furry, and we’ve been seeing them more often, spooking around the pyramid or the loafing shed, staying near the cat food & shelter.

Maybe we’re not so different from the animals, whose behavior is regulated to a degree by the length and angle of shadows on the land. Since living in South Dakota, for example, I’ve developed this weird autumnal yen to line a cave with a knee-deep layer of twigs & leaves, or piece together hide robes thick enough to repel ice bullets. A general malaise creeps in, too, with the knowledge that soon we’ll be boxed in for as long as Jack decides to toy with us. But the sun is out right now, Mom and the kids are coming for dinner, and we’ll all pretend it’s just another glorious, lazy autumn day…as we sip our wine and dip our Doritos.